The village where I live is just to the north of Peterborough in the UK but is far enough away that there are green fields between us and the city itself.
Unfortunately, the Government has decided that Peterborough needs more housing (as part of the so called Stansted corridor - remember that Stansted is more than 50 miles away). This means that the fields to the north of Peterborough are likely to be built on.
Now this may not seem to be a problem, after all whats' a few houses? The real problem is that the suggestion at the moment is for 2,500 new houses a school and "township" centre with shops etc. Never mind that the jobs are not in the local area, the roads are full, the trains to London are packed every morning - someone in Whitehall has decided that this would be a good idea.
Now then, this North Werrington expansion, is more that twice the size of the village I live in, and while a new primary school will be built at some stage many of the children that move into the proposed housing will have to go to school somewhere until the developers get round to building the school. I guess that some will try to cross the Peterborough bypass and come to the village school - after all, we are not full (we have about 18 places at the moment all in the under 7's ages).
More details about this development etc will be published once they become available. Minutes of the working group for this development are now available on the Glinton.Net site
Thursday, October 19, 2006